Page 5153 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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imagine, but I do not believe it is appropriate to prescribe in such a restrictive fashion exactly what will be offered by the health service.
It also needs to be mentioned that to fail to mention other possible services is somewhat peculiar, and I have to say that such a list as that proposed by Mr Berry would unnecessarily narrow perceptions about the types of services that the board is able to provide to the people of Canberra. They will naturally change over time, they have changed considerably over time in recent years, and there is no reason why they should not continue to change quite dramatically. If that is the case, then there needs to be flexibility. I therefore urge the house to reject Mr Berry's amendment.
MR MOORE (10.48): Mr Speaker, I cannot accept what Mr Humphries is saying about limiting the flexibility of the Board of Health. In fact, the amendment proposed by Mr Berry starts:
to include, without limiting such services ...
It is quite clear that there is no limitation on it, but the advantage of what Mr Berry is suggesting is that the health board must not be seen to be a revitalised or new form of hospitals board. By adding and qualifying in the way Mr Berry has, it seems to me that the board and the people of Canberra will realise, and be in a position to see quite clearly, that the board in fact has much broader scope, and ought to operate over a much broader scope, than just that of a hospitals board.
I believe that everybody in the house feels that if we are going to have a health board - and I accept the proposition of having a health board - it ought not to be limited in scope at all. But it ought to have an emphasis; there is a need to take the emphasis away from hospitals and towards health promotion and the other aspects of health. By listing some of those, and a broad range of those, we would make the situation quite clear to any layperson reading the legislation - and the nature of this sort of legislation is that it does get read by laypeople, just the same as the Schools Authority Bill has for a long time been read by members of school boards and by people interested in that matter. They are not lawyers about to take things to court, but they are people trying to work out what they ought to be doing. So it becomes quite important for the board, and for people who are interested in what the board is doing, to understand what it is about and what its nature ought to be. We had it quite clearly explained by Mr Humphries in his introductory speech that the board ought to have a broad nature.
I would ask the Government to reconsider this amendment. It does not limit at all. It starts, "to include, without limiting such services", and puts a totally different emphasis on the board. It changes the emphasis away from
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